About 1,500 customers who have put deposits on a total of 3,500 orders for airplane kits, parts and complete aircraft at Van’s Aircraft will have until Jan. 15, 2024, to accept price increases or risk losing their deposits. As part of Van’s Chapter 11 filing on Monday (posted by a commenter on the vansairforce forum), the company submitted a motion which, if approved, would allow the customers to apply their deposits to a revised purchase agreement. If they don’t take the deal, their order will be canceled and they will become one of those on a long list of creditors who will have to make claims in the bankruptcy case to get their deposits refunded. If the court approves the plan, all those who’ve made deposits will get an email with links to a portal where the details of their proposed new purchase agreement will be outlined. They will be able to accept or reject the terms through the portal.
In the filing, the company says it will lose money on all those orders if they are executed under the original terms and that if it doesn’t get permission from the court to increase the prices the future of the company will be in doubt. “Rejection of certain Customer Contracts at this time is critical to [the company’s] near and long term reorganization prospects,” the filing said. The petition only applies to merchandise produced by Van’s. Some customers have also put deposits on engines, avionics and propellers made by third-party vendors and those transactions will be dealt with separately. The filing said Van’s “will be in discussions with those third party vendors to determine what can be offered to those customers.”
